Back-End Vs Front-End

Hi,

What is the norm when a front-end programmer (e.g VB) designs an interface for a database (e.g Oracle)?

Specifically, I mean should the front-end programmer hard-code constraints like null/nullable fields into his/her interface, or should he/she just output the meaningless Oracle errors to the user? (e.g via the VB interface).

I was thinking there are good and bad things about the front-end programmer hard-coding/duplicating the "controls" into their program.

The bad: if the DBA un-nulls a field on the Oracle DB, the front-end will still insist on a input of data for that field. The DBA must tell the programmer to do some re-coding and re-compile the front-end.

The Good: if certain fields need to be unnulled (e.g for some data-migration), it will not affect the front-end. That means data-entry staff can continue to data-entry and all the "checks" will still in be place.

So what is the norm?

Thanks

To e-mail, remove the obvious Received on Tue Mar 28 2006 - 02:15:21 CST